Crossbows Are Underpowered in D&D

>>48917889
Ranged weapons have always been underpowered (to some extent) in D&D, because the system's main Ranged weapons have always been magic.
Take the Firebolt can trip vs an arrow:
>firebolt - 1d10, avg 5 dmg
>arrow - 1d6+mod, the best result you're going to get is 11dmg, avg 8dmg
There is almost no point to a magic user having a bow.

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>>48917889
ITT: Water is wet

Yup, they are kinda nice early level for shenanigans but they quickly get outscaled by everything else.

>>48917968
>have always been
Not always, but who even bothers with 0D&D anymore?

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>>48918046
That's a DC15 check anon, stop fucking metagaming.

>>48917968
>because the system's main Ranged weapons have always been magic.
No it hasn't, at will cantrips are a new thing. A caster in 3.5 should always be packing a ranged weapon unless they're high level as hell or the DM is their bitch.

>>48917889
It would have been easy to do like some games do with crossbows and guns; double the damage, double the load time (so every other round), but in the end they decided to keep it somewhat equal.

>>48917889
To be fair, the advantages of the crossbow are lower training time and reliable results in the hands of a mediocre wielder.
Adventurers are usually career fighters who WILL train and specialise, so the longbow with it's benefit of faster fire will eclipse the crossbow just due to the person firing them being able to get more out of the weapon.

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>>48918046
>>48918072

>>48918130
>the advantages of the crossbow are lower training time and reliable results in the hands of a mediocre wielder.
And yet crossbowmen were elite mercenaries, while Hawkwood's longbowmen turned out to be ill-suited to italian warfare when longbowmen acted as mercenaries.

This is essentially nonsense; the crossbow punched significantly harder (by the late 15th century, bows couldn't punch through even men-at-arms' armor and the english praised the billhook, not the bow, as the national weapon, most records of it punching that hard are from accounts of welsh guerilla) and unlike the bow as used by the english, it provided direct fire.

>>48918188
Yeah, but D&D's wonky armor system makes it a nightmare to have meaningful armor piercing weapons without making things complicated.

>>48918046
>forcing this dumb meme

What a dumb fag.
Especially because crossbows are pretty OP in D&D.

>>48918633
>crossbows are pretty OP in D&D.
Between no Str bonus to damage and not being able to make multiple attacks, they fall behind bows very, VERY quickly.

5E is rules light so it's not going to perfectly capture a lot of intricacies. But they're fine in terms of internal balance. Crossbow expert turns you into an uzi-wielding gun-fu character.

>>48918673

That varies by edition. In 5E you add your dex mod onto non-thrown ranged attacks so crossbows don't have that particular disadvantage in 5th.

>>48918673
>Str bonus to damage
That's because outside of 3.5 ranged weapons always used dex, and 3.5's idea of putting strength bonus to damage was retarded and the opposite of how bows work (composite bows should be more powerful at equal strength, if anything the bows that should be limited by strength are selfbows)